Here in Chicago, Spring can’t come quickly enough. . .I stare at the yard as if able to summon crocuses and daffodils by sheer force of will. I’m not alone. Fellow Midwesterners are flocking to Flower Shows around town, longing for the sights and smells of a garden in bloom.

Eager for a change of season, last week’s Garden Club lecture couldn’t have come at a better time–an opportunity to study the use of flowers and floral motifs in Window Display. As I prepared the presentation, I looked for design parallels between Nat’l Council of Garden Club guidelines (very specific, widely published) and retail design (largely unwritten but widely acknowledged). If “a rose is a rose is a rose” then good design is good design, yes? Do the same rules apply and are the outcomes consistent?

Yes and yes. Balance, dominance, contrast, rhythm, proportion and scale play a role in well-designed garden/floral projects as well as in effective window displays. The evening’s lecture touched upon each of these principles and looked for non-traditional interpretations.

Flowers in test tubes and beakers instead of vases.

Gesso-dipped bridal bouquets? Oversized paper blooms? Have fun! Apply the design guidelines and bring Spring to your store. . .with or without Mother Nature.

This is one of my favorite windows ever: newsprint and rocks.

It’s tough to beat for a cost-effective window display! There will be, inevitably, times when business owners and visual merchandisers simply run out of ideas. (I can mark January 2006 as the year I officially exhausted my ability to produce a new and different type of Swimwear display.) At our studios, we turned to “Arts in America” and other arts-focused publications, visited area galleries, took a field trip to a museum–whatever it took to recharge our creative batteries and generate new inspiring ideas.

I snapped this window–a Boulder, Colorado gallery installation –not a retail store–for possible re-interpretation as a retail display. There’s tremendous potential for additional iterations. The suspended elements could switch to balls of yarn, bags of candy or Valentine’s gifts. The floor could be kept clean or become a continuation of the hanging display. Please note–the artist has executed this work with a great deal of precision and attention to detail. Note the consistent heights along the strings, etc. It might appear random but it is anything but! In order to achieve the same effect, one must observe the same careful execution.

As fine artists continue to explore technology and push the boundaries experimenting with new materials, there are countless ways for us to adapt their work and to bring fresh creative perspective to our offerings.

In closing, here is another window inspired by arts periodicals–clean, simple, inexpensive and effective. In fact, all 13 of these windows closed ahead of schedule–SOLD OUT!

(Editor’s Note: We’re welcoming in 2010 with some can’t miss window and merchandising techniques that apply whatever your customer presentation. Our resident expert on all things visual, Amy Meadows, shares her creative inspiration for some phenom January presentations.)